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About LinkBacksWhat are your thoughts on the humanzee/chuman question? Is it ethical? Do you even think its possible?
November 15th, 2010, 08:35 PM
What are your thoughts on the humanzee/chuman question? Is it ethical? Do you even think its possible?
some background on what aspect of the question you're referring to would be useful
I would like to have a personal army of humanzees who I would put in a large room, each in front of a typewriter.
I would churn out best sellers, one after the other.
And it would only cost me bananas.
Is that the kind of answer you were looking for?
Why waste time making a Humanzee? Aren't humans ape enough for you already? Do you really want this shit-flinging, Shakespeare-reading, mountain-man looking conglomerate to exist? What purpose would it serve other than to amuse your curiousity?
Humanzee,,, digivolve into,,,,,,CHIMPANZEE!!!!!!
Sorry I couldn't resist
Try harder next time.Originally Posted by zendra
Agreed. Sorry zendra...that was pretty lame.Try harder next time.
ok i apologize it was spur of the moment and i felt in a active mood
no need to apologise for a lame joke - we've all been there at one time or another
the worst punishment for a lame joke is that no-one laughs
except the lame people.
Chimpanzees are far stronger, with keener senses, and more intelligent for their brain size than humans. Humans have gone through successive waves of inbred devolution since we last did as well as chimps. Chimps can human sign language, how many words of chimp do any of us know?
To be "descended from chimps" is not an insult. To be a hairless inbred species (man) is.
If you are seriously thinking of crossing man and ape your views are an abomination. Don't disgust the chimps with your inbred presence. Maybe sometime we can acquire chimp genes the genetic transplant laboratory route.
There is no such thing as devolution. It's all evolution. You seem to suggest we've gone backwards due to an arbitrary set of characteristics which you deem important, but arbitrary and subjective they are.
Humans are not necessarily better or worse than chimps. Just different. Anything else is arbitrary value judgment and opinion.
without arbitrary value judgment and opinion there would be no science forum.
No, studies have found them to be similar in strength to (larger) humans with one exception. That one exception is from the 1930s if I remember correctly-far older than the other (also old) studies, and it used sketchy methodology criticized by later studies. Yet for some reason it is that one that always gets cited; lay people evidently prefer sensationalism even if it is simply false.
Even our bite forces are similar to those of chimps, as a recent study by Stephen Wroe found.
I would need sources for all of that. Our perception of detail in sounds is likely unmatched, and that of our vision is likely quite good (although we do probably have a higher incidence of people in need of glasses).
I definitely need a source on them being more intelligent for their brain size-and what does that even mean, exactly?
Along with what inow has stated-done as well at what?
They don't use proper syntax, so saying "chimps can human sign language" is a bit of a stretch.
Their "language" has a very slim vocabulary of grunts compared to ours and lacks proper syntax.
A chimp that needs glasses and can't afford an optician is a dead chimp.
I cannot believe you have the audacity to call (In)Sanity an arbitrary value judgment. The nerve of some people.
Interestingly, GuildCompounder doesn't seem to use proper syntax, either.They don't use proper syntax, so saying "chimps can human sign language" is a bit of a stretch.
It can't be true that chimps know fewer words of chimp in the wild than they know of human sign language. They can't likely be better evolved at knowing the language of another species then their own, unless you claim they predated humans and needed to know what we said? So it follows if you thought there was a few grunts to their language, you don't know what they are saying at all.
With a lot of animals, communication is subaudible to humans.
To say there is no value judgement to make, that all judgements are subjective, is nonsense. That is to say that "whatever happens in nature, is the fittest thing, because it has happened." Circular reasoning.
Mental exercise: A population branches and becomes a subset of the former genetically (see inbreeding depression) within several generations. Now, how are you going to argue the subset was just as fit as the superset population which has evolved over thousands of times the number of generations? The superset population can obviously deal better with conditions that have not arrived yet for the subset population, conditions which are in fact going to arrive. Therefore the subset population is not as fit.
I have a new population genetics model described in Wikipedia under "Inbreeding" -> discussion -> "Overpopulation Inbreeding" if this interests anyone.
Do you care more about spelling and syntax than the content of what is communicated? I think that's call "pedantic".
There is no such thing as devolution. It's all evolution. You seem to suggest we've gone backwards due to an arbitrary set of characteristics which you deem important, but arbitrary and subjective they are.
Humans are not necessarily better or worse than chimps. Just different. Anything else is arbitrary value judgment and opinion.That's not what I said, though. Read again. I said that there is no such thing as devolution, just evolution.
I said that it is little more than your personal preferences which are causing you to assert that evolutionary changes in humans (as we became less like chimps) have been negative changes (you've suggested they are a "step backwards" by using the nonsense term "devolution"), and I said that this is little more than your arbitrary and subjective opinion.
You can make all of the value you judgments you want, and these judgments WILL all be subjective, but the fact that we call them "value judgments" doesn't mean they actually have any value.
Nope. I didn't say that either, and I'll just point out to you that fitness is specific to the environment and changes when the surroundings change.
First, I never argued what you said I argued.
Second, as I pointed out above, fitness is dependent upon the environment.
Third, you suggest things are "obvious" based on more arbitrary and subjective judgments. You really should stop doing that.
I care about both, and was making a joke at your expense.
Humanzees are crap. Even the name is crap. If there were humanzees, they would have climbed out of their caves and wondered what the giant chainsaw hacking down all their pretty trees, and we would have seen them. They would be too smart not to make contact with us. Since they haven't, they don't exist.
Who suggested that they do?
no one. Merely meaking my opinion known. Im sorry if I violated any rules of biology or established fact. There is a reason you can't breed elephants with lions. Genetic simioarities abound, but I think that
a) A human would never mate w a chimpanzee and we dont have gentic engineering capaility.
b) It would end up like a liger and die after two years, or at birth.
You didn't, but you're arguing against a point nobody has made.
A human might well mate with a chimpanzee. There would be no offspring, but it might still occur. We don't have the genetic engineering technology to produce a viable offspring, but it's not implausible that we will develop that level of technology.
How can you possibly know the properties of a hybrid individual when one has never been produced or examined? You are also incorrect about ligers, which can live to 20 years or more in captivity. This is comparable to lions and tigers. Ligers are also not always sterile.
I apologize for my 1st comment
bt anyway, one would have to be really desperate to mte with a chimp. Genetic engineering is more likely, but will probably oulawed i it involves human genes.
Tigers and lions are mrely different species
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/panthera
Humas are in an entirely different genus (homo) than the chimps (pan).
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/hominidae
No worries, was just trying to understand if you were making some point I'd missed.I apologize for my 1st comment
Yes but try to understand that taxa such as genera and species are not defined in terms of genetic difference or mating capacity. They're largely descriptive categorizations- based on things like gross morphology. Not arbitrary by any means, but also not so relevant to this discussion.
Cladistics are a more genetics-oriented attempt to build meaningful phylogenies.
I was thinking that the classifications might not be relevant to genetics when I posted that, since the animal classifications were made long before anyone knew genes existed.
Do you know the genetic similarity of tigers to lions?
If it is more than 96% then we would not know whether human and chimpanzees could breed, right?
Cool. I believed the sensationalist stories before as well. What I read was that a 175 lb chimp pulled 700 pounds on an apparatus (equivalent to a deadlift..perhaps.... depending on the range of motion used..many scientists haven't touched a weight in their life and don't even know what a proper deadlift is...)...this seems impressive, however at the higher end of the strength spectrum 170-180 pound powerlifters have either achieved this lift or come very close. A 220 pound bodybuilder named Johnnie Jackson has deadlifted in excess of 800 pounds. Also, chimps have no way to isolate and train specific muscles as we do with controlled movements (concentration curls, squats, etc.). However, chimps can be heartless. They will unabashedly rip off a man's testicles and gouge his eyes out...things a normal human being would never consider doing..I believe their ruthlessness is what makes them appear to be so strong in comparison to people.No, studies have found them to be similar in strength to (larger) humans with one exception. That one exception is from the 1930s if I remember correctly-far older than the other (also old) studies, and it used sketchy methodology criticized by later studies. Yet for some reason it is that one that always gets cited; lay people evidently prefer sensationalism even if it is simply false.
Even our bite forces are similar to those of chimps, as a recent study by Stephen Wroe found.
we should make humanzees and use them for clinical trials and other trials...
The old study that was later criticized produced claims for chimp strength far higher than all of the later ones (which is especially funny, considering the later ones provided incentives to pull, while Bauman's did not beyond curiousity or entertainment).
Glen Finch ("The Bodily Strength of Chimpanzees", Journal of Mammology, 1943 , so that you can look up the article if interested) did a test where chimps were motivated through food-he built an aparatus where they were forced to pull a rope to obtain bits of food. If they failed to pull, the amount of food was continually increased until it became "substantial" before it was considered a failure.
Chimps were tested both in normal condition and when starved to increase motivation.
Male chimps pulled from 375-487 lbs, and the people 338-525 lbs.
There was a ratchet that engaged every three inches, and it looked like they could brace their feet against a solid wall to pull.
I have never tried such an exercise myself, but considering the ratchet and that the legs seem like they could help with the pulls substantially, I would expect myself to be able to pull a lot of weight as well. The gym I go to doesn't have any machines that could let me try anything like this either. It should also be noted that I gave adjusted the adjusted weights the article provided; the pulley moved the weights 2 units for every one unit the rope was pulled (doubling the force necessary) and there was friction involved.
I would expect a power lifter to out-pull a chimp.
Chimp attacks that led to the devastating injuries we here about have been on the relatively old and women, and not healthy, young, athletic adult men. Granted, such people don't make up all that high a percentage of the population, so we might not be able to draw conclusions one way or the other here.
I would expect a mixed martial artist to be able to defend themselves from a chimp attack with success.
EDIT:
I'll consider typing up a response to Guildcompacter-must leave now so it would be a while.
I'd like to add something..the article claims that a large human male can bench press 250 pounds...that is maybe what a 150 pound high school kid can press. I bench press 340 x 3 at 216 pounds (and 20-22% bodyfat, which means I only have perhaps 160-170 pounds of muscle) and I've seen people bench press 400-550 pounds at the gym. Strong is a 500 plus pound bench press.
Bench press is the worst measure of strength c'mon man. 500lbs. is a lot too, muscle man material. I don't know why anyone would want to become such a meatball anyway.
Well the studies focus mainly on other pushing exercises and a lift similar to a deadlift (though the second study was invalidated, as stated above). I wouldn't discount chest strength though..primates are known for their broad shoulder and chest strength used for brachiation. I disagree that the bench press isn't a good indicator of strength. Yet it would be very difficult to get a chimp to perform one.
340x3 is sick, I have to give you that. Be careful not to rip your rotator cuff in halves.
I'm pretty sure i'll inevitably hurt mself eventually...lol...only injury so far was a pulled hamstring...I imagine I may suffer a slipped disc in my spinal cord like my dad did eventually...hopefully nothing serious...
We don't need a humanzee. There are plenty of sub-evolved humans out there, and unfortunately they are employed by school boards at several states.
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